Gershwin – Nice Work If You Can Get It (String Quartet Score)

This song featured in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress starring Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine. 50 years later the arranger Bill Thorp dedicated his version to 'Mrs T' which, taken with the song's title and original marking "with gainful employment", has been considered by some to be a wry political comment. However, things are not always as they seem, a more commercial example of which we find in the songs initial couplet "The man who only lives for making money, Lives a life that isnt necessarily sunny", the penultimate word of which clearly gave the arranger some employment. **** Not for sale in the USA ****

Review: "Witty, lively, and full of appealing musical allusions." – Fanfare March/April 1993

Biography

Thorp, Bill

Bill Thorp, born in 1952, started arranging music, while still at school, as a member of a folk group in which he played string bass. More experience followed with a college based acoustic folk-rock bank, playing violin, viola and piano, which went on to work professionally for two years. Later, in a varied career which included performing with string quartets at some of London's pizza restaurants, he was prompted to arrange music especially for that grouping and situation. Nowadays his playing career ranges from appearing on Renaissance, Baroque and Classical Violin with most of London's period instrument groups, to odd recording sessions on country and western fiddle.